Lamb’s Ear – The New Yorker

No more at home herethan the lambs, though noless soamong the Banks Peninsulaâs steep,grassy, and almost pathlessdeclivities, the paired-off stalks can growto the height of a house cat; they slouch,almost as much at easeas a cat would be, amid the taller foxglove blooms, whose buttered-popcorn and flame-orange bells emerge so early in the Southern summerâs game,as if to ring in the new year.

Too soft to be called teeth,too thick, exceptin direct sunlight, to see through,the diminutive lobes on their immaturealuminum-gray or Statue-of-Liberty-green leavesâ edge look faded even when brand-new.

Their paler fur will catcha drop from a hikerâs water bottle if it spatters,if that hiker happens to slidedown the unexpectedly paraboliccurve of a given hillside.Though dwarfed by nearby sheavesof bladed flax, or harakeke, the woolly stemscan hold their ground like hooves;the individual petioles tryto overtake one another, competingharmlessly, like teamsin the fairest of sports.

Each puffed leaf-ridge seems to invite a childâs finger and thumb.No thicker than the skinof a tuned kettledrum,they might have comehere in search of a world without force, or at least without force of arms.

If they could speakthey would not; they would waitfor a durable peace,for people taking one another on faithacross the continents,as well as in this not-quite-wildernesswith its traced-in, bush-sheltered not-quite-farms,where no human being or sheepis likely to get entirely lost,given the tree-bark hash marks, dry plankshelters, twine-bordered streambeds, and occasional hand-carvedfenceposts with their hand-mountedscarlet or cherry-red fire alarms.